How You Do One Thing ….

byDeborah PenneronFebruary 27, 2016

How you do one thing is how you do everything.

I’m not certain of the origin of this phrase. I heard it seven or eight years ago and it has stayed with me. Through a ton of resistance (at first it felt like a definitive judgment of the state of my life), then beginning to notice where it’s true. Nothing else. Just a noticing. That noticing has become a theme in my life. I love connecting the dots.

I remember thinking when I first heard this that I can feel the truth of this and holy fuck I’m screwed! (That btw was before I had screws inserted into my upper & lower back and right hip to keep the skeleton stable – our repetitively used words are powerful) These words – How you do one thing is how you do everything – felt overwhelming to me at the time and for several years after. I could feel the truth of it in my body and I felt powerless to shift it.

Give yourself the gift of beginning to notice where you see it playing out in your life. I do that by noticing the patterns.

Current example of pattern noticing

I have had the urge to switch hosts for a few months now. Little things that have become bigger things with the website, especially ease of movement within the backend. It is far slower than I want it to be, or needs to be. (My apologies to you the visitor for that).

I have had conversations with my hosting company over the past two months. The problem was not solved after making sure the suggestions were in place. Best practice suggestions, like keep images at the smallest viable size, minimize plugin use, no unused plugins on the site .. and yes. They were mostly in place. I got rid of one unused plugin which didn’t make a huge difference in my backend experience.

I decided to switch hosts. I even told all of you I’d be switching.

But wait! Maybe, maybe I am wrong here. Let me give them another chance. They were polite, doing the best they knew. Maybe the problem is in how I communicate the issue. My thinking is after after all often circular. (Sound vaguely familiar, that if “I just do this one more thing maybe it will get better?”)

Second (third and fourth) chance …

My back end was now becoming inaccessible more often than not. This time I accessed support in writing via support ticket. I thought through the problem and communicated it as effectively as I could, stripped to the bare essentials without my running commentary and related squirrel thoughts, questions clearly asked. And the problem got worse instead of better as I followed the suggestions given. Some of the questions were never addressed. One in particular relating to changes in my back-up plugin. (When I solved that issue, my back end went back slow but accessible … which was the original problem … still not solved)

None of the solutions offered were viable, and the responding interactions were for the most part condescending.

How you do one thing is how you do everything.

One more chance. I’ll give them one more chance. And then another one more chance. Maybe I’m wrong. And oh my! Maybe one more chance. Maybe this time it will be different!

No! No. More. Chances.

Yes. This time it will be different. This time, I’m choosing to walk out that door and change hosts. No more one more time. I’d like to work with a company that knows WordPress backwards and forwards, is willing to guide me and guide my clients through the inevitable glitches and surprises that go with this territory without belittling the learning curve. Maybe even encouraging the learning curve.

So, I’m breaking up with my current host. Stay tuned. More on that as it develops.

And this pattern of one more chance? It is how, in one way or another, I’ve experienced the prolonged ending of almost every longer term romantic relationship I’ve been in.

Pay attention, without judgment to how you’re operating in the world. Notice that as you begin to shift how you do one thing, in one area, no surprise here, it translates into the other areas of your life. It begins to be fun. The overwhelm leaves and sometimes?